by Eric Vall
“I’ll be safe here,” she argued and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Ravi, no,” I growled, and I dipped my massive head so I was at eye level with her. “Your father and I both agree that it’s best for you to be as far away from the fight as possible. We’ve already talked about this.”
“That was the plan when we thought they were still a few days away,” she pointed out with a stubborn glint in her eyes. “The echidnas are here now, and we are not as prepared as we should be. We need as much help as possible.”
“I know,” I told her gently. “If this were any creature other than the one that is immune to fire, I would love to let you defend your people, but unfortunately, that is not the case. You are the future of the tribe. You have to stay safe for your people’s sake.”
Ravi sighed in resignation, and after a moment, she erupted into a column of blue flames. Then she beat her wings and hovered in the sky above me.
I took off after her and searched the village below for Kiran. I finally found him with his small group of friends on the opposite side of the village.
“Kiran!” I roared down to him.
He glanced around him for a minute before he looked up. He spoke quietly to his friends, and then a column of fire burst to life, and he shot off the ground in his phoenix form.
“What do you want?” he asked sharply as he hovered several feet in front of my face.
I growled, but I knew it would do nothing to respond to his tone, so I ignored it.
Even though I kind of wanted to open my maw and swallow him whole.
“The echidnas are here, you need to take Ravi and find someplace safe,” I explained quickly. “They burrowed into the sand to sneak under the village. I’m going to alert the people.”
“Wait, wh--” the phoenix started to ask, but I cut him off.
“Chief Fiyero wants Ravi with you,” I leveled him with a glare as I bared my fangs, “and you are to take care of her. If anything happens to her, I will kill you personally.”
He nodded his bird head sharply. “I already have a place in mind. Follow me, Ravi.”
“Wait!” she cried as she frantically looked down at the village.
“What is it?” I asked her.
“We should take the eggs.” She looked to Kiran. “There are only a few of them, we can carry them. I may not be able to fight, but I can do this.”
“Okay, fine,” Kiran sighed, “but we have to be quick, okay? You head to the nursery nest, and I’ll find the parents of the eggs so they won’t be worried.”
Kiran took off to the west of the village, and Ravi turned to me.
“I’ll be right back,” she promised as she dove toward a tent deep in the center of the village. Then she transformed into her human self and darted inside.
I flew down after her and landed in front of Kiran’s group of friends. There were three different males in the little posse, and they all raised a brow at my arrival but stayed silent.
“The echidnas are here,” I growled quickly. “I need you three to alert the tribe. Anyone who is able should prepare to fight.”
Their faces changed from indifference to concern and then to determination in a flash.
“Yes, Lord Evan,” one of them responded, and the other two nodded silently. Then the three of them took off in different directions to alert the tribe.
I looked around the area for any sign of attack before I flew back into the sky. Ravi and Kiran returned in their bird forms shortly after I did. Ravi had a bag slung over her back and under her wings, and an orange egg with dark spots sat perfectly center in the pack. Kiran had a similar bag draped over his back, but his contained two different eggs: one was red with white spots, and the other was orange with red spots.
Ravi flew over to me and pecked my snout gently with her small beak.
“Be careful,” she cautioned me.
“You too. Don’t let Kiran be too much of a jerk, okay?”
“I’ll try my best,” she laughed quietly while Kiran scoffed. Then she turned her head to watch Kiran as he flew away, and she hovered in the air for just a moment before she looked back at me.
“I’ll see you later, okay?” I promised her, and she nodded.
“Okay.”
With that, she finally turned and followed after Kiran. She looked back for a split second once she caught up to him, but then they flew away together.
I watched them go for a moment before I turned back toward the tent where I’d last seen Fiyero and Valerra. Both of them had shifted into their true forms by the time I’d returned. Fiyero hovered above the ground as his golden wings flapped quickly, and his eyes searched for any movement in the sand. Valerra, on the other hand, stood perfectly still along the ground, but her eyes were trained on the sand as well, and her tail swept anxiously behind her like a cat waiting to pounce.
I flew down next to the chief and landed on the ground. I noticed he was small enough that he could easily hover about the loose sand and not disturb it, but Valerra and I were both too big to hover. The sand would get blown around and make it worse to find the echidnas.
I watched the area for any unusual movements, but failed to see anything after a few minutes.
“Have you had any luck?” I asked as I turned my massive draconic head toward the chief.
“Not yet, but they have to be here somewhere,” Fiyero explained, but he never took his eyes off the sand.
I could still sense the dark presence that emanated from the echidnas deep within the earth, but they were hard to pinpoint with the phoenixes around us, and so far, we all had failed to see any of them.
“Any sign of whoever screamed?” I asked as my eyes began to search the desert around us for any movement.
“None,” the chief replied. “I know it had to be one of our scouts, since these three tents out here are reserved for the scouts on current duty. They can arrive at any time of day and not interrupt the rest of the village. It also helps with our defenses to have our best fighters sleep in a position that can be ready to defend against an attack at a moment’s notice.” He finally looked away from the sand and hummed to himself. “I suppose I could find out easily enough. I would just need to talk to the scout leader to find out who was on duty today and then figure out who is missing from that list. That will be something we can answer once we’ve rid ourselves of the echidnas and made sure the rest of the village is safe.”
“Do you think the missing scout is okay?” I asked, though I already feared the answer.
“I can’t be certain,” he sighed mournfully, “but I do know it would be extremely difficult for a single phoenix to survive a direct attack from echidnas.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” I nodded. “We need to find where these bastards are and where they are headed.”
“And we need to find them before any more of my people are hurt.” He looked at me with determined eyes. “I will not lose anyone else today.”
“You won’t, Chief Fiyero. I swear.”
Suddenly, Valerra let out a vicious snarl and slammed a foot into the sand, and we both whipped around to face her. The crimson dragon raked her claws into the ground and pulled out a fist of sand.
Inside her clawed fist was a single echidna.
It looked exactly like I remembered, like a giant black beetle that wanted to eat us. It was roughly the size of my leg, but with Valerra’s size, it was easy for her to wrap her claws around its body. The creature’s black scaly skin was covered in thick, fur-like hair along its spine, and its countless crimson eyes all glared in fury at Valerra.
The crimson dragon growled as the insect snapped its claws at her.
“Do you mind doing the honors?” she asked me. “I don’t particularly want to be burned by its blood.”
“Sure,” I said, and I focused on the sand below us. Then I let the sand rise into a small wave before I nodded to Valerra, and she let the echidna go.
It took off toward me and started its piercing high
-pitched chirp. Valerra roared and shook her head in pain, but I used my healing magic on both of us to deafen the sound before I used the sand wave I’d formed to crush the echidna into the ground.
The chirping stopped, and its green, acidic blood bled into the sand where I had squished it. Its body twitched sporadically as its guts seeped into the ground, and I grimaced.
“One down,” I said to Valerra and Fiyero. “A lot more to go. How did you find it, Valerra?”
“They are loud,” she snorted. “If you listen closely, you can hear them as they crawl below the surface.”
We all stayed quiet as we listened for more, but I couldn’t detect anything at the moment. Maybe that one had been a scout?
“Do you know how these things work?” I asked Valerra as I noticed the people inside the village begin to emerge and approach our group. “The last time I fought these fuckers, you seemed to know a lot about them.”
“I know a bit.” Valerra nodded. “They are very one-track minded creatures, which explains why they have hunted the phoenixes for so long. They are strong and very hard to kill. With their acidic blood and fire immunity, dragons are not the best creatures to attack them.” She gave me a pointed glare. “But they do have their weak points. Their scales are relatively soft, so if you have a weapon, they can be killed easily. Bow and arrows tend to work the best since you won’t need to get close to kill them. Their bellies and their heads will release the most blood when attacked, so try and avoid those areas if you use a sword or any other close-range weapon. They also tend to attack in swarms to overpower their enemy. Stay in the air if you can, it will make everything much easier. They can’t fly, so as long as you stay out of their reach, you should be fine.”
“How are we supposed to attack them in our phoenix forms, then?” someone asked from the crowd that had formed around us. “We only have our fire that way, and it’s useless against them.”
“You were all trained with some weapons, right?” I asked the group, and they all nodded. “Okay, good. Then you’ll have to fight in your human bodies. Even a small amount of training is better than none. If anyone has a bow, try to get up high and take out as many as you can. Everyone else, avoid their blood as much as possible. I won’t force any of you to fight, so if you don’t want to, that’s fine. Stay off the ground and out of the way. For those who do want to fight, get ready. The echidnas are here, and they have burrowed under the sand. We don’t know when or where they’ll attack, so we have to be careful from now on.”
I heard a few scared murmurs in the crowd. The number of people had grown since Valerra’s explanation, and it looked like the entire village was here.
“Silence!” Chief Fiyero’s voice boomed next to me, and the chatter in the crowd instantly ceased. “Lord Evan and Valerra have given you instructions for how to defeat the beasts. Anyone who chooses to fight should go now and collect as many weapons as they can. Those of you who choose to avoid the fight may fly west. Kiran and Ravi have found shelter there, and you are free to join them now before the battle begins.”
A small handful of phoenixes stepped away and transformed before they flew to the west, but surprisingly, the rest of them stayed.
“Valerra,” I turned to the crimson dragon, “do you know what else echidnas are attracted to? They obviously can sense magic, but is there anything else we could use to our advantage?”
“Yes,” she said after she thought for a moment. “They cannot see very well, so they use the fur on their backs to help them navigate the desert similar to the Deathstalkers. If we create enough vibrations through the sand, it might draw their attention, and they might come to the surface.”
“So, what, you want us to stomp around the sand?” I asked with a laugh.
“It’s better than doing nothing,” she replied sharply.
“If this works it will give us an advantage, too, since they won’t have the element of surprise,” I mused and then shrugged my massive shoulders. “Let’s try it, I guess.”
Chief Fiyero nodded and repeated the instructions to his people, and a few minutes later, all of us stomped across the sand. The sun shone brightly as we marched along, and I watched as it moved across the sky.
Five minutes later, when nothing had happened, I finally spoke up.
“Valerra, I don’t think this will work,” I told her.
“Shut up,” she snapped as she kept her golden eyes glued on the sand.
“Hey, it was worth a shot--” I started, but she cut me off.
“Evan! Shut up!” She whipped her giant scaled snout up and bared her fangs at me. “Listen.”
I blinked and listened closely by the sand. At first, I heard nothing, but then … a strange scratching sound came from down below, and it grew louder and louder with each second that passed.
“Over here!” I yelled to the phoenixes who marched across the sand. “They’re here!”
I noticed a few phoenixes held real weapons in their hands, while others wielded pans and knives. I also saw the cartographer, Nix, narrow his eyes in concentration as he gripped a long staff.
Suddenly, the sand beneath my feet began to shift, and Valerra and I both took off into the air. Then we watched from above as a hole opened in the sand, and the echidnas began to pour out. Hundreds of them poured from the opening and began to scatter around, and they snapped their claws defensively.
I used my power over stone to create walls in front of the echidnas to lead them away from the tribe. It worked perfectly. More and more of the beasts crawled out of the hole, but they were steered toward Valerra and me.
Then I made my move.
I used the same technique I had the first time I fought these bastards. I created a wall of rock around the hundreds of echidnas I’d lured away, and once I was happy with how many I’d trapped, I slammed the walls down and crushed them all into an insect puree. Their blood seeped into the sand and stained it green, and a few legs twitched as their severed muscles spasmed.
“Gross.” I frowned in disgust as I released the walls of stone, and they crumbled back to the ground quickly and created a small sand dune over the dead echidnas.
As I continued to hover in the air on my massive wings, I quickly surveyed the area below me. A few echidnas had escaped from my trap, and they chirped loudly in fear as they fled across the sands, but they were quickly handled by the rest of the tribe. A few of the phoenixes used long blades to stab the echidnas in the head, while others used staves to skewer the insects like kebabs. Overall, Ravi’s people were slow and sloppy, but it worked.
Once they had killed the last one, Valerra and I landed in a cloud of dust and sand.
“Well done, everyone!” I congratulated them as I surveyed the carnage around me.
Then I noticed Chief Fiyero. He walked toward us with a furrowed brow, and dread settled in my stomach.
“What’s wrong, Chief?” I asked him carefully.
“The colony that stalks us is larger than that,” he replied gravely. “By at least a hundred times. We killed perhaps a thousand, but where are the rest?”
Before I could answer, sand exploded around us.
Dozens of holes appeared in the dunes, and I instinctively jumped into the air as echidnas by the thousands began to pour out and crawl along the sand. Valerra followed shortly after me, and I watched as the entire tribe shifted into their true forms and abandoned their weapons on the desert floor.
“What the hell?” I yelled as I hovered over the echidnas. They were quickly swarming together beneath us to make a dark mass atop the pale desert sand.
“I think we found the rest of the colony,” Valerra shouted next to me.
I glared at her but turned my attention back to the problem at hand.
Below, the echidnas snapped up at all of us, but made no other sign to move. They simply waited underneath us, and I frowned.
“How smart are these things?” I asked Valerra. “How the hell did they know we would set a trap for them first before they att
acked?”
“They follow a queen,” the crimson dragon growled in reply as she flapped her wings beside me. “She gives them orders, and they obey. The queen acts on instinct and has no value for life. She would gladly send her entire army to kill a few dragons that she thought were a threat. She tested us, and we fell right into it. She wanted to catch us off guard.”
“So, now what? I’ll try to kill as many as I can with my stone magic, but I won’t be able to take them all out without exhausting my power.”
“Now, we improvise,” she snarled with a wicked gleam in her gold eyes, and then she dove to the ground and slashed at a group of echidnas with her claws.
I immediately sent my healing magic to the other dragon when I heard her roar in pain due to the creatures’ acidic blood. Then I created more walls to crush the echidnas, but more beasts just replaced the fallen faster than I could kill them.
I needed a new plan, and I needed it now.
I saw a few phoenixes had returned to the battle, and I could see their human forms as they picked up their abandoned weapons, but they were quickly overpowered. Without a second thought, I dove down to help and landed hard on top of several echidnas, and I could feel their blood soak my claws. My healing magic prevented most of the damage, but I could still feel the blood burn through the top layer of my scales. I used my lighting to electrocute as many of the beasts as I could while I ran to the phoenixes, but there were just too many echidnas between me and Fiyero’s people.
Then a bright streak of fire drew my attention, and I turned to watch as a phoenix landed next to me.
I frowned when they shifted into their human form.
“Ravi?” I yelled as I continued to hack away at the echidnas. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be with Kiran and the others!”
“I’m here to help,” she called back defiantly as she brandished a sharp metal shortsword and slashed at the closest echidna. “The others said you had a plan when they arrived, so I snuck away and came back.”
Her fighting form was perfect, and the echidna died quickly, but some of the blood dripped onto her arm. She screamed in pain, but I quickly healed her.